Jack Cox - Dodge Rose

The piece interests you.

Well, a long time ago now, Dodge and I discussed it, in relation to another deal, which went ahead anyway I believe. She must have made a note. I have to say I’m not really in that line anymore. It is a nice cabinet —

Bookcase.

Yes. It is very nice, you certainly shouldn’t have trouble finding anyone to buy it.

It’s very old.

Does seem to be. Georgian, by the look of it. But I’m not an expert.

There’s a lable.

A table?

A label.

Oh, the craftsman’s lable, that’s common. It should tell you how old it is, if it isn’t too damaged.

Why would it be damaged.

Because it’s so old, any reason. Can you understand it.

We couldn’t make out much. Would you like to see it.

I’m afraid if you can’t make it out I have no hope he said smiling and tapping his crow’s feet. Eliza looked embarrassed. We had forgotten to work out a price in advance. Would you be interested in buying it I asked.

He raised his eyebrows and pouted. I could give you two hundred dollars for it.

Eliza swallowed. She looked at me. That is, I said, quite a lot lower than we were expecting.

Siv burst. Ah it’s like that I’m afraid. Rotten business. People think there’s a fortune in it. I am sorry to disappoint you. He hung fire. Perhaps you would like a cup of tea.

We thanked him and he left the room still chortling under a very domestic tapestry that flapped back against the door jamb as he went. Eliza quietly ground her teeth. We waited a long time before we trusted him out of earshot. Do you think it really isn’t worth that much.

Eliza shook her head. He’s gurning.

Could she have said that.

A man looks at you like that wants your land or your daughter.

You think he’ll pay more.

Through the. Sh —

That’s continental direct speech for you. He was reversing into the room already, a kitchen’s halogen light streaming faintly through the brief aperture, slaver clinking with the essentials from a porcelain tea set and a plate of ginger nut biscuits between his hands. By the way, he said I remember now what Dodge was going to swap me the bookcase for. Couldn’t think for a moment. Hard to digest all of a sudden, the old thing coming back like that. Belly of the mind. I had a very nice set of ceramic tableware, cream. She bought it in the end. Is it still around.

I didn’t think so. Yes I will have a biscuit. I was getting delusional no, dizzy. No wonder the deal wasn’t going well we could hardly think straight. Eliza started laying it on with her mouth full. We came to you because you were one of the names we found associated with the bookcase. There were others.

There sure were.

Everyone gave us the same response, more or less, so we decided to do the rounds and settle it with someone today. Obviously we don’t plan on wheeling this thing back and forth across the city another time.

That’s understandable.

You’re our first customer. But we did talk values on the phone and we’re going on a ballpark figure of two thousand.

He crossed his fingers calmly and placed his hands in his lap. You do believe it is valuable.

Would you like to see the label.

No, I know what it says better than you do.

Eliza bit. What do you say Siv. You understand, we need to know if you’re still interested. We’ve made a late start as it is. We think we’re being very reasonable.

Narcissus let himself go in the fleshpots of afternoon tea, he peeped into his teacup, placed it back on the saucer. It can be surprisingly hard for us connoisseurs to say what a thing like this is worth. Once money enters into it. I won’t pretend it is not a very attractive object, certainly a, certainly a collector’s piece. Perhaps, if there was something here that interested you we could include it in the exchange.

We’re really not interested in old furniture.

What would you say to eight hundred. A predictable reduction I know, but I haven’t got more than a thousand in the shop. His hand strayed over the bench where he was leaning and it was hard to tell if he meant to indicate a repository, letting it come to rest somewhere between a clay vase studded with periwinkles and a ricket of pencils and old chewing gum wrappers.

Have you got a T.V.

I beg your pardon.

Have you got a television. We’ll give you the bookcase for eight hundred dollars and a television said Eliza.

Nothing in the shop, but I have a cranky black and white object out back I never watch. You’d be welcome to it.

Is it a deal.

He looked like he could hardly believe it. I couldn’t. If I wasn’t so hungry I might have said something. It isn’t laughter ruins reason.

Why don’t you help me get it out of there.

The bookcase was in three separate pieces. Together we lifted the base, the writing slope and the upper plinth from the trolley and sat them right way up in the middle of the shop. Nice work everyone almost screamed at once. The sun in the leaves outside filtered through to the glass ovals.

Now he said, if you go through there you’ll find the television in the second room on the right. Just unplug it and you can bring it out here like that. We ducked under the rag into a corridor. Doesn’t want us to see where he keeps his stash grumbled Eliza, squinnying for the doorway. It’s probably in that dense book. I bet it’s one of those fake ones with the pages cut out. A camouflaged sarcophagus. His burnished assiette. Vehicle and its freight, one sinking into something. We found the television in a mock Tudor living room with the curtains drawn, a worn in velvet armchair with the foot rest levered out, a lowboy, a liquor cabinet, a few rugs and journals lying around on modest furniture. I sometimes have the eye of a murderer. I pulled the plug and we carried the curved plastic box between us into the shop. It was orange. That’s it he said, a respectable distance from everything. It’ll fit in that trolley won’t it. We lifted it in. He counted eight hundred dollars in cash from one hand to the other then he passed the wad to Eliza. Uniform and divisible. Never let your feelings get away from you. You’ll be getting into antiques yourselves with that thing. Be wanting a computer soon, not a mirage but rasterized.

We have a whole flat full of stuff to get moving. Do you know someone who could value it all for us. We didn’t think of it before.

He gave us the name of a friend at the Old Ark on Wentworth Avenue, or was it City Road. We said goodbye then. I preferred not to look at what we were leaving behind. Somehow Eliza and I found our way back to the wharf. At the ticket booth she stuffed the fresh money in her sock and I broke the last of the original notes. The last pair of white mice, the last bow tie. The dish rolled into the microscope. It was a rough crossing. We tried sitting inside but Eliza felt ill, so we threw the blanket over the latest idiot and chocked the trolley with our feet on the deck. I am giving up my goods. What do you want to do now I said through all the bitter spindrift that flew between us. Not bitter. You want to get a meal in Chinatown, or we could go back to the Bourbon and Beefsteak and order Sonofabitch Cowpoke Stew.

She tapped her fingers to her mouth.

I gotta buy cigarettes she said irrelevantly. Too much salty. Perhaps she didn’t hear. Then, I am for staying in, ya bastard.

You’re Rose’s niece, well I’m pleased to meet you. It’s a terrible disease. Had a cousin. Ted Sullaman had one brilliant heel dovetailed to the handle of a stepladder, the other hovering over the final rung and both hands outstretched towards a beaded and nickel plated lamp where it sat with some cardboard hat boxes on top of a wardrobe. His hair was oiled down like patent leather and his serge suit quickened in a smooth dent across his shoulders when he turned to greet us. Hang on I’ll be with you in a sec. He lurched and grabbed the lamp by the stem in one hand, thumping the wardrobe with his knee so it shook, the price tag spinning on its blue thread. It wasn’t a price tag, these were auction rooms. Eliza and I stood waiting in a clearing among the cases and tables and sea chests with initials stencilled onto the lids. Carpets had been rolled up between them and they all held lamps, animalier, telephones. Among the electroliers and the other light fixtures something like an umbrella had been strung to the high ceiling. Sullaman came down rattling.